Even I was taken aback by these numbers. Encouraged yes, and surprised as well. I’ll reserve comment right now, but want to toss this stuff out. It’s fascinating and obviously very important.

These are outtakes from the final post in Thomas Edsall’s NYT blog Campaign Stops, in which he reports on what’s being called the ‘Rising American Electorate”. It’s quite remarkable. The youth vote is pretty important in these numbers which, to me, means our future will be very different than our present.

Not only does a plurality (49-43) of young people hold a favorable view of socialism — and, by a tiny margin (47-46), a negative view of capitalism — so do liberal Democrats, who view socialism positively by a solid 59-33; and African Americans, 55-36. Hispanics are modestly opposed, 49-44, to socialism, but they hold decisively negative attitudes toward capitalism, 55-32. . . . When voters were asked whether cutting taxes or investing in education and infrastructure isthe better policy to promote economic growth, the constituencies of the new liberal electorate consistently chose education and infrastructure by margins ranging from 2-1 to 3-2 — African Americans by 62-33, Hispanics by 61-37, never-married men by 56-38, never-married women by 64-30, voters under 30 by 63-34, and those with post-graduate education by 60-33.

Actually, I don’t do Super Bowl posts. I don’t even do football posts. But thanks to Political Irony and Bill Maher’s New Rules, I have learned there’s an angle of interest to me, an entirely new angle on this ‘ball game’ business. I learned the freaky scary truth about the NFL . They’re commies! Run-for-the-frackin’-hills!

A week ago, I posted about a New Rules bit in which Maher compared baseball and football in terms of popularity and earnings. He pointed out that football – the clear winner – is run on a ‘take from the rich, give to the poor’ model. The NFL, he said “put all of it [television revenue] in a big commie pot and split it 32 ways [among the teams].

We learn more from Political Irony: Take the Green Bay Packers who have won more NFL championships than any other team. How do they do this? Do they pay their players more? No! In fact, they have the lowest median salary in the NFL. Do they represent a big city? No! Green Bay (population 100,000) is the smallest city to have a major league football team. Their games always fill their stadium (which can hold 70% of the entire city population) and they have a waiting list for season tickets that could more than fill another stadium just as large.

So how do they do it? Most people don’t realize this, but the Green Bay Packers are a non-profit community-owned organization. You can buy stock in them, but it does not pay dividends, and it never increases in value. It is a worthless investment, and yet they have 112,000 shareholders (more than the population of Green Bay).

Bill Maher comments on the decline of baseball, and the vigorous insurgent success of football:

” . . . football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. You have to be a rich [team] just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in.

Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy . . . That’s why the NFL runs itself in a way that would fit nicely on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard – they literally share the wealth, through salary caps and revenue sharing – TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it 32 ways. Because they don’t want anyone to fall too far behind. That’s why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call “punishing success.”

It’s from one of his recent New Rules segments. (I don’t have HBO so I never get to see his show, but do manage bits of it online)

Meanwhile, I just picked this up at The Conservative Lie. A fine construct describing one of my favorite subjects.

This morning I, an American conservative, was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet — which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration — and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.